Good story! The Tolkien reference was nicely done; is Aerhien’s background your own invention or inspired by another source? I get the feeling I’ve seen it somewhere, though that could be merely a matter of having seen each ingredient separately.
My one quibble about the hero is that he deduces too much from too little data—in particular, the probability that the counterforce exists, is an exponential function of how many times the world has been saved so far; in his shoes I’d look at the records before making a call on that one.
“Another said: a superhero is someone who can save people who could not be saved by any ordinary means; whether it is few people or many people, a superhero is someone who can save people who cannot be saved. ”
This seems to be a reference to (or at least influenced by) Fate/Stay Night, correct?
I was annoyed to discover the other day that none of the Type Moon games have official English releases. We’ve gotten the manga and anime adaptations, but not the visual novels. (There is a fan translation patch, but importing the Japanese game is not as easy as getting an official English version. And I’m not going to stoop to piracy to get it.)
So you also associated to her specifically? I noticed the similarity while writing, but didn’t think it would be noticeable while reading. Guess I was wrong. I’ll rewrite slightly—if that’s noticeable to others, it bothers me.
For what it’s worth, I don’t see any need to change it; archetypes echo down generations of storytellers because they work, and this character works very well as she is.
I do see such a need, actually; I think that particular sector of description was influenced by Shiara, which means I got lazy for ten seconds and didn’t do my own thinking, and was punished accordingly. So I changed the emphasis slightly, to what I think it might have been if I hadn’t also thought of Shiara. I expect this sort of thing can be handled by changing one or two lines rather than a complete rewrite.
For what it’s worth, I also thought of Shiara immediately when I read it last night, largely because of the “summoning an offworlder with mysterious knowledge” premise combined with the shared archtype and the “dead lover” bit.
And yes, “a lot of lucky heroes” is what I’m thinking—suppose there have been a thousand wins at 50-50 odds, that’s about 300 decimal orders of magnitude, which makes it almost certain that the counterforce really does exist. If the number were less, that makes the anthropic explanation more likely. That’s why I would check on the numbers before drawing the anthropic conclusion.
Good story! The Tolkien reference was nicely done; is Aerhien’s background your own invention or inspired by another source? I get the feeling I’ve seen it somewhere, though that could be merely a matter of having seen each ingredient separately.
My one quibble about the hero is that he deduces too much from too little data—in particular, the probability that the counterforce exists, is an exponential function of how many times the world has been saved so far; in his shoes I’d look at the records before making a call on that one.
Rick Cook’s “Wizard’s Bane” has Shiara the Silver; that was a neighbor that came to mind when I wrote Aerhien.
Also, even going on only the words Aerhien says out loud, it sounds like there’ve been a lot of lucky heroes.
“Another said: a superhero is someone who can save people who could not be saved by any ordinary means; whether it is few people or many people, a superhero is someone who can save people who cannot be saved. ”
This seems to be a reference to (or at least influenced by) Fate/Stay Night, correct?
Correct. (Direct reference, not influence.)
Ooh, is this “guess the reference”?
Neon Genesis Evangelion / Warhammer 40k fanfic?
But of course. I quoted that particular line in a “Rationality Quotes” a while back.
Out of curiosity, have you played the games, or did you just come across that particular quote and approve?
I was annoyed to discover the other day that none of the Type Moon games have official English releases. We’ve gotten the manga and anime adaptations, but not the visual novels. (There is a fan translation patch, but importing the Japanese game is not as easy as getting an official English version. And I’m not going to stoop to piracy to get it.)
Ah! Yes, I knew she reminded me of someone.
(To anyone who hasn’t read the Wiz series: highly recommended.)
So you also associated to her specifically? I noticed the similarity while writing, but didn’t think it would be noticeable while reading. Guess I was wrong. I’ll rewrite slightly—if that’s noticeable to others, it bothers me.
For what it’s worth, I don’t see any need to change it; archetypes echo down generations of storytellers because they work, and this character works very well as she is.
I do see such a need, actually; I think that particular sector of description was influenced by Shiara, which means I got lazy for ten seconds and didn’t do my own thinking, and was punished accordingly. So I changed the emphasis slightly, to what I think it might have been if I hadn’t also thought of Shiara. I expect this sort of thing can be handled by changing one or two lines rather than a complete rewrite.
Fair enough, that’s reasonable.
For what it’s worth, I also thought of Shiara immediately when I read it last night, largely because of the “summoning an offworlder with mysterious knowledge” premise combined with the shared archtype and the “dead lover” bit.
And yes, “a lot of lucky heroes” is what I’m thinking—suppose there have been a thousand wins at 50-50 odds, that’s about 300 decimal orders of magnitude, which makes it almost certain that the counterforce really does exist. If the number were less, that makes the anthropic explanation more likely. That’s why I would check on the numbers before drawing the anthropic conclusion.